BRISTOL (RI)
Boston Globe

September 25, 2019

By Amanda Milkovits

BRISTOL, R.I. — The parish priest at St. Mary’s Church on Tuesday defended his decision not to fire a church administrator who was accused of child molestation and questioned why others in the town also put their faith in the accused, David E. Barboza.

“I mean, they voted for him. They elected him to office, they supported his involvement with the fire department, the Rotary, the Democratic council,” the Rev. Barry Gamache said, referring to the Bristol Democratic Town Committee. “They say, ‘You trusted him.’ — It would appear the entire town trusted him.”

He spoke in a phone interview with the Globe, after a story this week that looked at what Gamache and the Diocese of Providence knew about the allegations against Barboza.

Gamache was also confronted after Mass Tuesday morning by the parishioner who’d been the first…